Unlike dragonflies or whales, however, some animals weren't designed for such incredible passages. But they made them anyway.

Tortoises, for instance, started in Africa yet likely got to South America due to their uncanny hardiness — they can float with their heads above water and go without food or fresh water for six months.

What about animals that don't have that kind of grit? Most probably made their incredible transoceanic journeys aboard accidental rafts of vegetation.

Rafts across the Atlantic Ocean explain how many animals, which are now native to South America, managed to populate the continent.

Google Maps/Tech Insider

9/

That's the current explanation for how these poorly flying hoatzins got to South America. Tens of millions of years ago, they probably floated from Africa to their current home in the Amazon rainforest.

And rafting is still going on today. Scientists recently observed one in action with a group of green iguanas in the Caribbean.

Following a 1995 hurricane, fisherman on the island of Antigua noticed that the non-native iguanas had washed ashore aboard a raft of uprooted trees and logs.

Google Maps/Tech Insider

14/

Of course, no list of animal journeys would be complete without our own species. We managed to walk all the way from East Africa through Asia, over a frozen Bering Strait into North America, and through South America.

Google Maps/Tech Insider

15/

But the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego are the champions: They made their way to the southernmost tip of South America and, like the Yaghan people below, who also have the distinction of being the most southerly human culture on the planet.